GameSpot has word that Trond Arne Aas has stepped down as CEO of Funcom, noting the surreal timing of this coming on the eve of the launch of The Secret World, the Norwegian developer's latest MMORPG. For his part, Aas seems to think this is coming at the appropriate point: "The company's financial position is strong and the foundation of the company's long-term product and technology strategy is in place," Aas said. "It feels like a very natural point in time for me to make the transition to a new and freer role in the company, but I will remain committed to the Company both as a major shareholder and as an employee."

Cutter wrote on Jul 3, 2012, 02:10:Story driven is fine if you can bang out the content fast enough. If not it's pointless.

I disagree. The more time and resources that these companies spend on the story component of their mmo, the higher the risk of failure. If they want to make a story driven game, stick with a single player game. It has already been proven that mixing the two doesn't work. It fails.

Verno wrote on Jul 3, 2012, 09:32:It always kills me that there is a whole generation of player that thinks of MMO gameplay as bear ass collecting and raids. No wonder everyone is bored with it.

I hear yeah, but the three alternatives mentioned, never got a large base to start with. As for this game, it's a mmo wait a couple months, see what's up. You can pretty much tell. Chances are this will be just like all the recent rest. The mmo story now is which one won't be the mmo that falls off largely after a couple of months.

JohnBirshire wrote on Jul 3, 2012, 01:06:Unfortunately it has at least one glaring fault: it's almost entirely story driven

Yeah, that right there is reason for me not to even bother. My favorite MMO's of all time, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call *Darktide*, and Planetside, had very little, if anything, to do with story. I read books, see movies, etc for stories, I play MMO's to interact with other players. Usually in negative fashion, hence my three favorite MMO's. :-)

Agreed. UO, AC and PS had excellent player driven environments. I spent months doing the faction combat in UO alone, it was entirely player driven and as a result very dynamic and interesting.

It always kills me that there is a whole generation of player that thinks of MMO gameplay as bear ass collecting and raids. No wonder everyone is bored with it.

Veterator wrote on Jul 3, 2012, 00:58:With lots of "read once" items that if you missed a number somewhere you were stuck unless you asked for help or somehow were able to read the item again by cancelling and starting over.

Not sure which quests you mean... All the quests with an "image" (including text displays like computers, etc) have either the text in the tier description for the quest, or theres a "SHOW IMAGE" link in the quest tier text that you can click to display.

I don't even think you can cancel a quest if you wanted to. You can take a different main quest over the one you have, but that just puts the quest on pause in the current tier, so even if you went back to it, you'd still be in the same place.

JohnBirshire wrote on Jul 3, 2012, 01:06:Unfortunately it has at least one glaring fault: it's almost entirely story driven

Yeah, that right there is reason for me not to even bother. My favorite MMO's of all time, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call *Darktide*, and Planetside, had very little, if anything, to do with story. I read books, see movies, etc for stories, I play MMO's to interact with other players. Usually in negative fashion, hence my three favorite MMO's. :-)

I agree. I mean, who the hell cares about a story in an mmo? It's a massive "multiplayer" game. The players should be creating the drama. Anyhow, Bioware already proved that a story driven mmo was a mistake.

Unfortunately it has at least one glaring fault: it's almost entirely story driven

Yeah, that right there is reason for me not to even bother. My favorite MMO's of all time, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call *Darktide*, and Planetside, had very little, if anything, to do with story. I read books, see movies, etc for stories, I play MMO's to interact with other players. Usually in negative fashion, hence my three favorite MMO's. :-)

Thought the first zones of Secret World were decent. And Egypt was OK for a bit....then it became very sloggish and buggy. With lots of "read once" items that if you missed a number somewhere you were stuck unless you asked for help or somehow were able to read the item again by cancelling and starting over.

This was...2 weeks ago. And I have no idea how many zones they were supposed to have been adding. But I saw 3 themes with 3 parts, so 9 zones in total...last theme didn't have a story arc and middle theme the story arc was purposefully turned off.

I figure that amount of content MIGHT last slow a player as long as 2 months. And someone who plays a lot, they could go through it all in 2-3 weeks easy if not faster if there's no major bugs to slow them down.

My biggest concern with the game would be nerfing, because they were doing a lot of it in beta...turning abilities completely off at times during the weekends due to them being too much in PVP. It's really irritating to have a character be intentionally broken every couple days.

Rossafur wrote on Jul 2, 2012, 23:03:Well, Doom-sayers, I'm enjoying the game, have been since Friday and have had zero issues logging in or crashes or server outages or any other such thing. But then I enjoyed SWTOR in the beginning too... (which was a much less friendly launch, though)

FWIW, I really like this game. Unfortunately it has at least one glaring fault: it's almost entirely story driven - and there are only two major story arcs. When they've played out, I could'nt find a reason to stick around. Content will have to come fast and furious for this game to survive.

Timing is odd, to say the least. Stranger is that he references that he's still working in the company.

It's a shame that this will probably mar whatever little chance of success that the TSW launch could have had. I didn't really think it was going to be a big success, but I was hoping for a small one. The game is actually really fun. While the combat mechanics aren't too unique, the actual leveling aspect is fun, and I'm having a really enjoyable time doing their quests (Especially the research ones) and reading their lore.

Also, been playing the game since Friday, and haven't really had any major issues. Hit a bugged quest, but a GM replied in less than an hour and progressed the quest for me, and let me know it was a known issue.

Well, Doom-sayers, I'm enjoying the game, have been since Friday and have had zero issues logging in or crashes or server outages or any other such thing. But then I enjoyed SWTOR in the beginning too... (which was a much less friendly launch, though)

Paranoid Jack wrote on Jul 2, 2012, 21:50:Didn't the same thing happen when they were ready to release Age of Conan?

Age of Conan they ousted the CEO after the game was a disaster and his career as a dev was pretty much over. This seems like the CEO preemptively letting someone take over as CEO because he knows about the incoming train wreck and doesn't want to get blamed for it.